To Survive
by goddessa39
Summary: Secrets movies and tissues are the way to share the lonliness. And ignore the longing. Completed Btvs.Reba


**Title**: To Survive

**Canon**: Btvs/Reba

**Disclaimer**: Nope, neither Buffy nor Reba are mine.

**Characters**: Buffy. Reba Hart, etc...

**Summary**: Secrets movies and tissues are the way to share the lonliness. And ignore the longing. (Completed) Btvs.Reba

* * *

Six feet under and packed in cotton and your little black dress, you're dead. Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead. It hurts and you've left me alone and I know I'm over eighteen but I'm supposed to be dead. My throat hurts and a pale face bites in to my neck and drains me just enough to leave me in shock. In my dreams I fall into the cold, dirty water of the hidden cave underneath bare feet and I am dead.

This isn't a nightmare, not anymore. This is a giant wish that I can die and become one with anything. I am nothing here.

Aunt Re' takes me in, she has the room, she says. I meet her daughters who I've hardly remember and her son I've never met. I meet the step aunt and the Uncle who I liked once upon a time.

This place is normal in the demons maybe but there is awkwardness and pain clogging up my throat.

I dream of bites. And hope it is the white faced fruit-punch-mouth taking me out of this Godforsaken world and not the stone gargoyle swallowing up my light.

* * *

She sits on a light colored couch across from another couch. Between them is a table where her cold cup of coffee lays forgotten. She curls around herself beneath a blanket, head peeping out to watch commercials. She hates the things, but they distract her. Blonde hair is kept up behind her by scrunchies and they part in two long strands. Pigtails may not be in but they are good for when you are moody.

If I can die right here I won't even have to cry, she thinks. Tissues gather on the table.

* * *

She doesn't touch the appliances, knows they will go wonky with all of the energy flowing out in her despair. Instead, she passes out plates and washes them when there are dirty forks and knives lying around. She's good with her hands, no so much with the recipes. Aunt Re' cooks and cleans. Her southern drawl is different, Mommy had gotten rid of hers as soon as she got to California.

Mommy's accent hadn't really been an accent anymore.

When Brock is leaving, food freezes in hands and dark blue eyes follow him from the back door, stock still and passionate. Frozen.

She looks away as it isn't her business.

_Dark brown eyes look at her in pain and want her to understand. But she can't because she's young and powerful, and why does he think she can handle normal when she's going to die young?_

_She already has._

* * *

In the movie, he leaves her because he says his nonexistent sister needs him when in truth the man in question is cheating on his girlfriend. But he says he loves her and he ignores it.

Beside her, Aunt Re' holds tissues as she bawls at some times, and they both yell at the screen as if it is truth. And afterwards when the others are all out and away doing things that don't involve them; they curl up together and cry.

When she dreams there are dark trees and the moon is full. A moon howls in the distance, and she wonders where Oz has gone off to. From behind, strong arms and a familiar musk register on her senses. She lets him pull her towards him and wishes he were really there. They haven't shared a dream in years though, and she is a glass half empty kind of girl now.

* * *

When the kids are gone and the house only holds the two of them, they share their lives in little things. Blonde hair and cool green eyes show her Aunt the scars and tell the stories of some that don't even appear on her skin any longer. Reba Hart shows her only niece the picture of the ultrasound. She's never spoken of it since she lost the baby and no one else will ever know.

Brock never even had a clue and the fact that her own daughter got pregnant a month later and had the baby to full term was a slap in the face. Reba tries not to resent her first born child but misses the babe who would have been her fourth. There is an empty place in her heart, and Brock has swallowed it.

No matter what, she cannot ever like Barbara Jean. The blonde ditz stole more than her husband. She stole the babe in her belly.

When the Slayer dreams, she sees open skies and the familiar dark blue eyes of her Aunt. When she wakes, Buffy tells her stories of the child that could-have-been. Andrea would have had those blue eyes and that red hair that her siblings hadn't inherited. She would have been petite like Buffy but bright and eager to show it. Her ambition would rock them all.

Would have,

She's dead now.

Well, really, she hadn't been born.

Doctors do not even consider her a child, just a premature fetus that was and never Was.

Buffy will never have babies. She regrets this at times. She wishes she could have. At night she dreams of a world with the familiar brown eyes in a little boy and girl with her light hair and smaller frame, but with both of their parents' more supernatural tendencies.

She sees another young boy with dark hair and brown eyes who has dimples and plays with puzzles.

She sees a little blonde girl with her own green eyes and practically her clone. She would have been the apple in her families' eye and emphatic.

Connor and Dawn, Liam, and Elizabeth. In another world they exist and will live happily-ever-after. But not here. Here, the Slayer mourns her lost chances and her Mother. She mourns her littlest cousin. She mourns her heart.

Reba and Buffy become close over the next few years. They see the children grow and come into themselves. They see the world pass them by with bitter embers in their hearts.

Still, they cling to the fact that they are not alone as they watch and dream of the other halves of their souls leave them behind and flourish elsewhere. Teasing them, but not really touching them.

They cling to survive.

* * *

**END**.

It's kind of short but I was just reading some of Rali's good stuff, and though I could never compare, I came up with this and ran with it. And if it isn't obvious, Joyce is dead and Buffy moves in with her aunt. Her pain makes her wish for Angel and remember that he isn't there when she needs him anymore. She mourns the place where Angel has left and Reba pines after Brock, who has left her for another woman and stuck around. I just thought Reba and Buffy were a lot alike seeing as how everyone saw them as strong and they weren't allowed to wallow or be weak.


End file.
